"That's curious," said Nugent, puckering his brows in a thoughtful frown. "She's just the sort to yell for release till her voice gave out.

She must have been frightened by your ugly mug, I suppose, and doesn't want to fetch you back again. Well, anyhow, she must stay there now till we've done with the _Cobra_, and then we must make what excuses we can.

Of course you know as well as I do that there's no danger of interference from the police, for the simple reason that Aubin hasn't laid her information. I have been merely holding them over our friend in the library as a bogey to induce him to go quietly on board the steamer."

"I tumbled to that much," replied Tuke, with a cunning smile.

"Well, don't relax your vigilance on that account," was Nugent's injunction. "There may be other prowlers--this girl's father, for instance, or the onion-seller, Pierre Legros. Either of them might upset our arrangements. And, above all, be within call when I want you."

Tuke growled a.s.sent, and Nugent returned to the library. "I am sorry to have left you alone so long to-day, but there has been much to do," he said pleasantly, adding, as he noted the restless irritation in Leslie's face, "Your suspense will soon be over. It is growing dark already, and by the time we have had some dinner it will be time for you to start for the chine. There are no signs of anything to prevent your safe departure."

"That girl, Louise Aubin--you let her out of the grotto, I hope?" said Leslie. "I should be sorry if she was ill-treated on my behalf."

"Chivalrous as ever!" Nugent could not resist the sneer. "Oh, yes; she's half-way to the Manor House by now, reduced to a proper sense of her misdemeanour. A little palm-grease works wonders with a Frenchwoman."

Presently the silent Sinnett served dinner, and during the meal Nugent un.o.btrusively continued to work the repentant vein he had developed earlier in the day. He waxed eloquent on his own difficult position as a man of birth and expensive tastes, thrown by force of adverse circ.u.mstances into a social groove that was really beyond his means.

"I had not, perhaps, your excuse of abject misery, Chermside," he remarked pathetically, "but the Maharajah's bribe was an enormous temptation, and I yielded to his importunities the more readily as I had incurred obligations to him. I shall look back upon our a.s.sociation with shame to the end of my days."

The proper feeling shown by his former accomplice called forth Leslie's sympathy. "I hope that Bhagwan Singh has no hold on you?" he said. "He is a vengeful beast, and from my knowledge of him he is not likely to overlook your aiding my escape in his yacht after throwing him over. He has the long arm of boundless wealth."

"I am aware of that," Nugent replied gravely. "If he strikes at me, I must pay the penalty. I must regard it as a just retribution."

At ten o'clock Nugent went to the window, opened it, and called softly into the darkness of the summer night for Tuke.

"Have you got the flares?" he asked, when the mottled countenance of his retainer appeared in the stream of lamplight. "That is well. Show the blue first, remember, and then green. Now, Chermside--least said, soonest mended. I am not going with you myself, but this man will see you through. The captain of the _Cobra_ has orders as to your destination. Good-bye, and may your next venture end in happier fashion."

He held out his hand, and, conquered by his seeming mood, Leslie returned the grasp. A moment later he was following his guide across the lawn, and so out of the door on to the moor. The night air was heavy with the scent of the dew-laden heather, across which they had to grope their way, and the croak of a fern owl alone broke the stillness as they skirted the golf links and came to the head of the chine at the foot of which they were to flash the signals that would summon the _Cobra's_ launch.

They were about to descend the steps cut in the cliff, when from the house they had just left, a quarter of a mile away, the "teuf-teuf" of a motor car was heard. Leslie found himself idly wondering what could have taken Nugent from home again so late. Possibly he was going down to the club for an hour or two, to drown the memory of his villainy in the congenial company of gentlemen who would have spurned him from their midst could they have known the manner of man he was.

"Now, sir; mind where you're going," came Tuke's hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"There's only a handrail in places, and a nasty drop if you fall."

The warning recalled Leslie to himself, and he gave his attention to the steep descent. In a little while they stood on the pebbly beach below, where the incoming tide was making gentle music on the smooth stones. No glimmer came across the dark sea to tell them whether the _Cobra_ lay out yonder in the inky pall, but that meant nothing. Nugent, they knew, had given the captain orders to veil all lights before he arrived opposite the town.

Tuke produced two cardboard cylinders from under his coat, and, striking a match, applied it to the conical head of one of them. There was a spluttering fizzle, and the flare burst out into a brilliant blue flame that shone steadily seaward, but was hidden from the coastguard station and the parade by a jutting angle of the cliff wall. For two minutes it glowed, and when it flickered out he repeated the illumination with the green flare, carefully picking up the empty cases when his pyrotechnic display was over.

"There!" he whispered huskily. "Now all there is to do is to squat down and wait. The boss said the launch is a quick 'un to travel. If the steamer's no more than three miles out she ought to do it in twenty minutes--with the tide in her favour."

The forecast proved accurate. In a very little over the time mentioned the click-clack of an electric motor was heard approaching the sh.o.r.e from the gloom, and Leslie, catching up the small handbag which was all the luggage he had dared remove from his lodgings, went down to the edge of the waves.

CHAPTER XXI

THE TRAP CLOSES

Miss Sarah Dymmock threw down the piece of old-fashioned embroidery on which she had been engaged since dinner, yawning aggressively.

"I'm a sleepy old woman, and I shall go to bed," she remarked with a snap. "Young people nowadays are bad company, though I suppose I ought to make allowances for you, Vi, as a what-d'you-call-it."

"That's a vague term, auntie," said Violet Maynard with a wan smile. In the absence of Montague Maynard in London the two ladies had been spending the evening alone, and the girl's nerves were all on edge at the prospect of the coming interview with her lover. The s.p.a.cious drawing-room at the Manor House had seemed like a prison, and dear Aunt Sarah's fluent talk like the chatter of a persistent parrot. Violet was annoyed with herself for her irritation, but she was nearly beside herself with an intense craving to stand face to face with Leslie and appeal to his manhood not to fly from the charge against him. The dragging hours had seemed interminable, since Travers Nugent's disclosure of Leslie's intended escape by sea.

"By a what-d'you-call-it I mean a prospective victim on the altar of Hymen," explained the old lady, rising and gathering up her work. "If I had ever been in love, which G.o.d in his mercy has spared me, I should have been pirouetting all over the place instead of sitting mum-chance and twiddling my thumbs. By the way, why hasn't your young man been out here to-day. Is he cooling off already?"

"I can hardly expect him to dance attendance on me always, can I, auntie?" replied Violet, making a brave effort to appear playful. She was wondering how she should explain on the morrow that her lover had been skulking somewhere all day preparatory to decamping altogether, if she failed to prevent him from adopting that disgraceful course.

Aunt Sarah sniffed as she took her bedroom candle. "I wasn't thinking of his dancing attendance on you, but on me," she rejoined, working herself into an entirely spurious pa.s.sion. "I wanted him to sign the doc.u.ments for the transfer of the securities I am making over to him, but I suppose that he has had other fish to fry. You'll have to teach him manners, child, when you're married--or at any rate attention to his own interests."

The little wizened old woman pecked at the pale cheek which her great-niece offered her, and stumped out of the room. Violet breathed a sigh of relief, for it had been becoming a problem whether her aunt would retire in time to allow her to get away unquestioned. It was quite on the cards that the energetic old spinster might have offered to accompany her if she had said that she was going for a stroll in the gardens before going to bed.

As it was, she was free to make her preparations without interference, and going out into the hall she provided herself with a motoring cap and a heavy golf cloak. Returning to the drawing-room, she was about to leave by one of the French windows when it occurred to her that as her "stroll in the garden" was to-night an excuse for a more extended expedition, it might be as well to take precautions against her being locked out. She rang the bell and ordered the butler not to lock the window, but to merely leave it on latch. She explained that she was going to enjoy the beauty of the night in the open air, and might not have returned when he went his rounds to see that all was secure.

"And don't trouble to sit up for me, Watson," she added. "I have a headache, and may be out some little while."

"Shall I leave the lamps lighted, miss?" asked the butler.

"In the drawing-room and in the hall," was the reply. "I will make myself responsible for putting them out when I come in."

The man bowed and retired, concealing with the tact of the well-trained servant the surprise with which the cap and cloak inspired him. He was aware that his young mistress was in the habit of walking in the grounds at a late hour, but he had never previously received such an order about not sitting up, nor had he known her to take precautions by putting on additional wraps.

"I've got my plate chest to think about," the faithful servitor muttered as he made his way back to his pantry. "Miss Violet is always considerate, but I'm blessed if I'm going to turn in while that window's only on latch. It appears to me she isn't in a hurry to come in to-night."

Having got rid of Watson, Violet lost no time in starting to carry out the project on which she was so feverishly bent. Along the n.o.ble avenue, lit now by only a few pale stars in an opaque sky, she flitted like a nymph of the night, only checking her footsteps as she pa.s.sed the lodge, lest she should awake the sleeping inmates. Out on the high road she commenced running, and so neared the clump of trees where she was to find the car. Nugent's carefully modulated voice hailed her from the darkness.

"That you, Miss Maynard? Right! Pray do not distress yourself by undue haste. We have ample time before us. There, let me help you in and make you comfortable. Dixon, take the hoods off the lamps and get in behind.

Miss Maynard will sit with me."

Nugent, who was at the wheel, extended his hand, and when Violet had settled herself at his side and the chauffeur had unveiled the great acetylene lamps, he sent the car spinning for Ottermouth at half-speed.

But he avoided the road that would take him through the main street of the little town, and struck into a series of country lanes that brought them by a detour to The Hut, without having to pa.s.s more than a solitary farmhouse.

"We are in luck so far," he said when they had swept up the drive and he had a.s.sisted Violet to alight. "We didn't meet a soul all the way.

Dixon, have the car ready here. I shall want to take Miss Maynard back to the Manor House presently. Now," he added, beckoning Violet to follow him, "we will go round this way, please."

The girl, all her mind set on her purpose, obeyed like one in a dream.

She wanted to meet Leslie and bring him to reason. It mattered nothing to her how she reached her goal so long as her task was swiftly accomplished, and she knew that the shortest way to the sea was through the grounds of The Hut. So without demur she followed Nugent round the house to the lawns and gardens at the back.

"It would be best to be perfectly silent," her guide whispered as they struck across the greensward. "My servants may not all have gone to bed yet, or some one else might be about."

"I--I thought I heard something there," replied Violet, laying a hand on his arm and glancing apprehensively at the spectral outline of the grotto, the walls of which gleamed white amid the gloom of the shrubbery.

"Only the breeze in the foliage," Nugent murmured hastily, and, taking the girl's hand almost roughly, he hurried her to the door on to the moor, opened it, and as quickly closed it when they had pa.s.sed through.

"There!" he said in a tone of unaffected relief, "we shall find no more obstacles in our way but a short walk through the heather and a scramble down the steps to the beach. Chermside will be waiting for us at the foot of Colebrook Chine."

But that prophecy was not to be verified. When at length they stood on the pebbles of the sh.o.r.e the figure which emerged from a nook in the cliff was not Leslie Chermside, but Bill Tuke, "the Bootlace Man."

"Well, where is Mr. Chermside?" Nugent demanded of him angrily.